Train Without Tracks
by SavageGardener
Summary: Musings on the freedom and chaos offered by absent-mindedness in one Cho Hakkai. Slight 58.


DISCLAIMER: Kazuya Minekura-sensei's. Not mine.

WARNINGS: Not really. We're all adults here, right?

SPOILERS: Never.

I wrote this fanfic in the space of a couple hours, but I've been thinking about it for a good month now. That's all I have to say, really. I hope you enjoy it, duckies. Sorry this is so short. Sorry I'm so lazy.

SNORKY

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Train Without Tracks

He has a problem staying on track, thinking about things which require attentive, slow thoughts and careful consideration. Things like making dinner for four, making dinner for two, even, or emptying ashtrays when they overflow onto stained, polished furniture. Which they always, always do.

And he can never remember exactly _what_ everyone wants with their rice or if they take cream with their coffee or just drink it black like ink.

And sometimes…

Sometimes he doesn't even want to bother with pairing socks or stitching holes back together in fabric and in flesh. And sometimes he would rather sleep in.

He gets sidetracked and his wanderlust becomes a dangerous thing like driving while intoxicated would be a dangerous thing if it were a possibility—of course it isn't because that would be a kindness unfamiliar to blood-soaked hands. Necessity drives him to drive straight, avoiding potholes, even if his train of thought is derailed.

Things—things aren't always his fault. Loosing his train of thought when his eye catches a paint stroke of crimson in his rearview mirror, or when the air blows perhaps a bit too hard for him to take a breath. When they thunder through puddles and the monocle is flecked with filth; that is not his fault—though many things are—that is not.

On rainy nights when his thoughts are sodden by water and by tears his train of thought sloshes through pools of blood that is not his own and, yes, his monocle is flecked again but it seems right this time. And he smiles through an emotion he cannot quite name (always on the tip of his tongue) and scrubs mindlessly at an eye that cannot see. When the air around him is tainted with moonlight and his train plods on to crimson hair again he lets it, though he doesn't understand it just right.

When he is absent-minded, he is forgiven. It happens so often, but he smiles enough to make up for it and cooks extra portions and drives extra careful.

And sometimes he is thankful when his train of thought runs without tracks, because it is easy to shift and easy to change the course without strength. He was born three years ago, but he can remember the proverbial womb. The time before he was marked under a new eye, the time before his memories began.

He remembers, and he is glad he can shift without strength.

Because memories which should not exist have a terrible habit of pulling at his deadened limbs when it never rains but pours. Because when he closes his unseeing eye he sees darkened corridors and empty promises and blood spilling from precious lips onto defiled skin and… and that is when it is good, very good, to have no duty to tracks.

Yes, he wishes, now and then, when inevitability draws him near and his mind skips to hopes that he dare not name (crimson in the moonlight and… what was that emotion again?), he wishes that he could stay conscious long enough to enjoy things mundane and simple. He wishes his hands could be still upon the wheel and he wishes he could remember that Sanzo doesn't care for conversation. His train of thought runs parallel to nothing, makes no regular stops, and he tends to forget that the silence between backseat scuffles and bloody battles must be savored. Sometimes he talks when he isn't supposed to, brings up rainy nights.

Sometimes when Gojyo leans in very close—a breath away—his train of thought is gone far, far away (squint to see), and he can only chuckle politely to words he doesn't remember hearing. _This is remedy_, he thinks softly, _this is remedy for… for what again?_

Perhaps it his punishment for his sins, for being too straightforward and too direct in his desires. This mist, this haze, this train of thought running smoothly over rough terrain, muddled ideas, half-grasped concepts. Reason based on faith… or is it faith based on reason?

Letting the rice burn once or twice. Giving Goku Gojyo's clean socks. Laughing when nothing is funny and only remembering things that happened in the time before his memories began, in the twilight of _ohgodpleasekillme_.

And sometimes this seems too cruel a burden. And sometimes he would rather sleep in.

And he thinks that, perhaps, it would be an enjoyable thing to hitch a ride on his train of thought to see where it would carry him because, oh, he gets so terribly, _terribly_ tired of sunsets.

If he were a mite more assertive, if he could stay on track for but a moment, perhaps he could find the strength deep down within his scarred belly to return the strangely meaningful glances. If he could just stop the train, keep it still for a time, he could reflect on the way those callused hands touched his in uncommon circumstances.

And… and…

…then at night he could look up into eyes through a curtain of blood-red and forget, just forget, that not-quite-virgin lips had smiled at him in the last seconds before darkness. And he could forget how warm the red had been on his hands, how cold the mud had been on his insides.

Penitence in confusion. Absent-minded delirium pressing down on him and all he can do, ever, ever do is smile back at infinity and hell and eyes.

He knows that the eyes through the blood-red curtain would wait for him to catch up to his train of thought. He knows.

Habit lends to convenience (a soft knock on the door, his door, rough, needy kisses on pliant, accepting skin), but in the sticky aftermath of it all when words should be incomprehensible he understands the breaths against his throat as speech. He can't help himself; he listens.

And the breaths always shape themselves around vocal cords, move according to a talented tongue and they reach his limited ear as language, slow and honest. Little, broken three-word sentences he shudders to hear. Little, broken promises he knows would be fulfilled if he could just bind his train to tracks.

Sleep drags him down into deep suffocation and, and for a little while the red is like apples and eyes and hair and callused hands on his own. His train of thought draws near, draws _him_ near, and he can reach out into the whirl of baseless beliefs and run his fingers against smooth, cool metal. And when he wakes up, the weight above him and the gentle puffs of air on his skin pin his train to trackless soil and he whispers little, broken three-word sentences back to deaf ears and unlit cigarettes.

Come daylight, come sunrise, he will find himself, again, racing towards something he is not quite certain he will catch.

Come nightlight, come sunset, he will find himself, again, racing towards sinking, velvet red in the sky. And he gets so terribly, _terribly_ tired of sunsets.

And, yes, he wishes honest-to-god-cross-my-heart that his train had tracks. He wishes he could remember that Goku is partial to chicken, Gojyo to pork, that Sanzo—he wouldn't admit it—sides with Gojyo there. He wishes he could remember to loose at cards once or twice to keep up morale.

Sooner or later, he decides, he will catch up to a thundering train. Sooner or later, he decides, tracks will materialize once the blood has been washed away with rain, with open-mouth kisses.

Because… because…

Because his memories date back before conception, because he can't find himself in the haze. Because Gods are still Gods even if they are demons, and they have mercy, yes? Because sooner or later the image of the blade in _her_ flesh will soften to a dull roar, to a gentle pitter-patter of droplets on the roof. Because a set of apple—yes apple—red eyes promised him something he cannot quite remember.

And, yes, yes he can get to the point. It may take a while—enjoying the view—but sooner or (probably) later, he can come back to a starting place ahead of memories and knives and scars.

That is, if you want him to.


End file.
